1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic apparatus which is adapted to an electronic note, an electronic memo, and so forth and more particularly to the electronic apparatus being capable of automatically dialing a phone number stored therein.
2. Description of the Related Art
With keeping electronic apparatuses thinner and thinner in these days, more people have known apparatus which provides an electronic-note function for storing names and their phone numbers and displaying them, an electronic-memo function for storing several memos and displaying them, and an automatic tone-dialing function (tone dialer) for generating a tone (DTMF, that is, Dual Tone Multi-Frequency) signal corresponding to a phone number and sending out the tone signal onto a phone line.
This kind of apparatus is constructed to generate a tone signal corresponding to a phone number registered at an electronic-note mode. This apparatus thus has an advantageous capability of automatically transmitting the phone signal corresponding to the phone number without manually dialing the phone number only if names and their phone numbers are registered at an electronic-note mode.
The aforementioned apparatus, however, has a shortcoming that it is incapable of automatically transmitting the phone signal corresponding to the phone number contained in a memo registered at an electronic-memo mode, though it is capable of automatically transmitting the phone signal corresponding to the phone number registered only at the electronic-note mode.
In dialing, it is often necessary to take a communication path composed of a public phone managed by a first common carrier (CC), that is, Nippon Telegram and Telephone (NTT) corporation and a toll line managed by a new first common carrier (NCC) for the purpose of transmitting a phone signal outside of a signal-transmitting area. In this case, the caller is required to dial a number for the NCC, a phone number for the called person, a caller's phone number, and a password number in sequence. The called person's phone number is variable depending on each called person. The other numbers are unchanged.
In order to cope with such a case, two methods have been provided for manually dialing a phone number for the called person and automatically dialing the other predetermined numbers.
One method includes the steps of pre-setting a pause period for manual dialing when registering the other predetermined numbers, and of manually dialing the called person's phone number for the pause period through dial keys on a public phone. This method, however, has a shortcoming that the caller cannot manually dial the phone number through the template keys provided on the automatic dialing apparatus while the registered data are being read out, because the registered data, that is, the NCC number, the pause period, and the password number compose one block of data.
For the other method, the caller can manually dial the phone number for the called person through the template keys provided on the automatic dialing apparatus. This method includes the steps of registering a first half dialing number and a last half dialing number as respective blocks of data, of reading the first half dialing number for automatically dialing the first half number, of manually dialing the phone number on the template keys provided on the automatic dialing apparatus, and then of reading the last half dialing number for automatically dialing the last half number.
As shortcomings, the former dialing method requires the caller to manually dial a phone number for a pre-set pause period through the dialing keys on a public phone. It is thus necessary to keep the automatic dialing apparatus in contact with a microphone of the public phone for manual dialing, resulting in requiring the caller to do the unnatural handling.
The latter dialing method can overcome the foregoing shortcoming, because the method makes it possible to manually dial a phone number through the template keys. However, the method is required to retrieve the automatic dialing number twice, resulting in requiring the caller to do the troublesome operation.
In turn, the description will be directed to a display unit for displaying the content (names and their phone numbers) of the data retrieved in the electronic note or memo. When a user handles a predetermined key (character input key, for example, which will be referred to as data key) provided in the electronic apparatus, the display unit serves to rewrite the displayed data. In case that the user is about to call as seeing the displayed phone number, however, the user often erroneously handles the data key. It results in causing the displayed phone number to change so that the user cannot see the necessary phone number.
To cope with this shortcoming, the inventors of the present invention know two methods for overcoming this shortcoming. For the first method, the electronic apparatus such as an electronic note or an electronic memo provides a function of invalidating any handling of the data key while the data are displayed. For the second method, the electronic apparatus provides a special key for calling the original data if the displayed content is erroneously changed.
The first method requires the user to release a data-key-invalidation mode with a predetermined key (a clear key, for example) when the user wants to input new data. Hence, the user suffers from the troublesome key handling. Besides, in actual, it is often impossible to invalidate the handling of all the data keys in light of the technical problem about the key arrangement.
The second method has a shortcoming that the display is changed when the user erroneously handles a special key. As another problem, this method makes it possible to call the display back with the special key when the user erroneously presses a character input key contained in the data keys. However, in case that the user erroneously handles the data key except the character input keys, it is necessary to call the data back again.
Further, there exists a problem common to the first and the second methods. In case that the user erroneously handles a data calling key, another piece of data is called and displayed. Hence, it is necessary to retrieve the data again for calling the previously displayed data.